Friday, September 26, 2008

School Is In Session

Dominion is racing to get an Illidan kill before the ‘clock strikes midnight’ on Burning Crusade. At the same time we are facing the normal turnover that I would think happens in most raid guilds. People decide to raid less or stop raiding at all, or their real life schedule changes in some way that makes them unavailable certain nights.

It got to the point that we had to cancel Tuesday’s raid. They were able to raid on Wednesday, and successfully knocked out 4 bosses in Black Temple.

Our healing corps has gone through some interesting changes in my time with Dominion. When I first joined, the bulk of our healing corps was Paladins. It got to the point that I was Blessing Sanctuary on the Priests.

Then things changed and our healing corps was Druid heavy. Our raids looked like a veritable forest. Then it shifted again, and you could hardly move around our raid for all the Totems the Shamans had dropped. Now, it seems we have come full circle as we are once again filled to the brim with the Knights of the Silver Hand.

When we got to forming the raid Thursday night, we were again shocked by a lack of Roguery. Luckily, we had a new recruit in the raid so we had the requiste 2 for RoS.

Rogues hold a fairly important job on Reliquary of Souls. During Phase 1, a Rogue is a great choice to ‘tank’ the Boss during her Enrage. There is absolutely no healing allowed, so a Rogue with Evasion up is how most guilds handle it.

Then in Phase 2, Reliquary does an attack called Spirit Shock. If it hits, the person is disoriented and walks around like they got Shatter Shot. If this hits your Main Tank, RoS feels free to go destroy the next person on her threat list, which for Dominion is usually one of our Warlocks or Hunters. The only way to prevent this is to interrupt the attack and the best candidate for that is a pair of Rogues alternating kicks. Other classes lockouts vary and you need to get into a rhythm or you will face a situation where both interrupters are on cooldown.

So our new recruit has to learn how to ‘tank’ Phase and kick in Phase 2. One mistake meant a wipe.

All of us had to learn the fight when she was a Progression kill. Now our new Rogue had to learn it, too. I thought everyone was patient during the learning process.

You can read about a fight, and watch a video, and get an explanation, but at some point you have to pull and learn what it’s really like. We all complimented him when we got through Phase 2, but wiped because our DPS was being too careful. You get some of your damage reflected back to you, and if you hit her too hard before you get healed you can kill yourself.

This is generally considered a Bad Thing.

Everybody did a great job sticking with it, and on the next pull we made to Phase 3. I’m the Main Tank for Phase 3. Basically, you get me to Phase 3, I’ll get you a kill.

I had a really close call on my health, but blew my Lay On Hands. It’s a nice “Oh Snap!” button but it’s got such a long cooldown you really have to pick your spot.

The healers got back in rhythm and we got a kill with only 4 people dead. As a bonus, we now have another Rogue in our roster who knows how to help us kill RoS.